Susan Sarandon: Money, not imagination, rules Hollywood

Actress
Susan Sarandon, 65, tells Metro why money men are ruining Hollywood, about her latest role in Jeff, Who Lives At Home, and how her political activism has influenced her career.

Susan Sarandon: Everything important that’s happened to me has come out of the blue and, thank goodness, I had the wherewithal to follow it at the time (Picture: Getty)

Your latest role was as a widowed mother in Jeff, Who Lives At Home. He is obsessed with the film Signs – have any films affected you in a similar way?

You take away a little bit of every character you play; some are harder to shake than others. I found the book and helped develop and produce the film version of Dead Man Walking and was in every scene, which was quite intense, and that took a while to get off my skin. The best films are the ones which challenge your perspective and make you reframe your view of whatever that issue is. There aren’t that many stories – it’s the way the director and writer choose to approach it.

Fate is a big theme in the film – what role has it had in your own life?

Everything important that’s happened to me has come out of the blue and, thank goodness, I had the wherewithal to follow it at the time. I can start with the birth of every one of my children – I wasn’t supposed to be able to have children. I went to Italy, started an affair and found myself inexplicably pregnant. I was looking for something that would give my life more meaning than my career, which I felt overqualified for. I had the child, which enriched and challenged my life – it just shows life has more imagination than I do in terms of pushing me in directions I can go. That’s happened a lot – either in terms of work or relationships, nothing happens that doesn’t have a lesson you can learn from.

Your character questions her sexuality in the film – what was that like to play?

It doesn’t matter the age, race, gender of the person you choose to be with. What’s difficult is being intimate with another human being. Once you learn to do that, the rest is just details. There are so many people who have found themselves in unforeseen situations. Where you come down on the sexual spectrum is very flexible but it takes courage to be vulnerable to another person – that’s the big step that has to be taken. There was a study about widowed and divorced women turning to other women. I don’t think it’s that big a deal. I could imagine that happening. It has to do with finding that person and once you set limits of age, gender, finances, you’re ruling out a lot of possibility.

How has the film industry changed during your career?

It’s much more corporate and less run by individuals. Decisions are made from a banking perspective by people who do not necessarily have imaginations or a sense of film. They’re now struggling to adapt to changes in technology and it will go through the same challenges the music industry faced. You can make films more cheaply now and, once those independent film-makers figure out how to overcome problems with distribution, you’ll see a huge change. The smaller, more human movies will find new ways to find an audience.

What impact has your political activism had on your career?

I don’t know but certainly leading up to the Iraq war, when I was asking unpopular questions, there were lots of attacks from the hate radio jocks asking for something to be done about me. I had death threats. There were people who felt, thanks to the right-wing papers, I was un-American. Others felt, although they didn’t agree with me, I had the right to ask those questions. The good news, and bad news, is Hollywood isn’t political. You stand more chance of losing work if you’re old or fat than you do if you’re political. I’m sure people have formed opinions about me because I have been outspoken but it’s like being worried if your slip is showing when you’re fleeing a burning building. I’d never dream of telling people what to think but there are very few sources challenging the view of the corporate media. Corporations have such a vested interest in certain things happening, you can’t take what they say as the truth all the time. Look at the recent scandals in Britain with phone hacking. Once Clinton got rid of the anti-trust laws governing media, you had the problem of a very few people controlling most of the information. It makes it difficult for people to make choices when they don’t hear the other side. I feel privileged to be able to be media-connected and there have been times when I’ve told people about situations they may not know about.

What do you get up to in your upcoming movie Cloud Atlas?

I just have tiny parts. I got to be an Indian man and completely tattooed, among other things. When I got to Berlin they’d done half the shoot. I saw a ten-minute reel which looked like a trailer for several different studio films – there were so many locales and time periods, it looks gorgeous. It was like being in a circus – the feeling of surrendering to the scope of the thing was contagious. Hugh Grant said he spent one day in make-up, longer than make-up for all the other films he’s done put together. It was a fun group – Tom Hanks, Halle Berry – they gave themselves over to the big ideas in the film. I was so tickled they brought me over to do a bunch of little parts. It was insane in the best way possible.